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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28103814">Name and Nest</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheliak/pseuds/Sheliak'>Sheliak</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Trek - Various Authors, Star Trek: Crossroad - Barbara Hambly</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alien POV, Gen, Rebellion, Worldbuilding, Yagghorths</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 21:48:06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,555</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28103814</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheliak/pseuds/Sheliak</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It is no small thing to no longer be alone.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Karetha &amp; Khethi (Crossroad), Karetha &amp; Varos (Crossroad)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Yuletide 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Name and Nest</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edonohana/gifts">Edonohana</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Once, when they were both young—she younger than that Vulcan boy who is the empath of the rebels—there had been a wild yagghorth. </p><p>A brief meeting: a chance invader to the ship (a different ship than their <em>Savasci</em>, long since consigned to some Fleet junkyard), play-fighting turned real, the other driven off (easily, easily, for how much larger it had been). </p><p>But the memory remained strong, after. </p><p>The moment in which the play ended had been the one in which the other yagghorth saw Karetha, and became aware of her not as nestmate, not as playmate, not even as <em>surrounds</em> but as prey. To this, Khethi had reacted: his playmate had become foe. And that was that. </p><p>The memory has come back, often, as Karetha dreams between stars. It has haunted her, and she thinks now that is because it has also haunted Khethi. </p><p>(Mindless the Fleet and the Consilium might call yagghorths, but not heartless. Never that.)</p><p>It had not simply been that the other would have eaten her; often enough Khethi has held back from eating some hominid because Karetha or some trusted crewmate of hers told him <em>no: that is one of us.</em> If the other had accepted such—if it had been willing to be with Khethi’s strange nestmates—then they might have played forever. But it had not been: had not even understood how Khethi saw those morsels scampering through his nest, that they might be other than food. And that was why. </p><p>It had been a painful thing, Karetha knew: Khethi had finally come to know that he was no longer entirely a yagghorth, as she had known almost from the start that she was no longer entirely Romulan. </p><p>She had long since resigned herself to some degree of loneliness. But she had had friends among <em>Savasci</em>’s crew—Varos, Dale, others, though only the one was left now. Khethi had had only her. </p><p>Until they met Nemo, it had not occurred to Karetha that Khethi was lonely. And, perhaps, it had not been in him to know he could be other than that.</p>
<hr/><p>The yagghorth of the rebels came into <em>Savasci</em>’s heart—easily, as such things always are for yagghorths. He did so to protect his nestmates, who had ventured there into danger: this, Karetha understands well. (Khethi would do the same, she thinks, for her: perhaps someday he will do it for Varos, when rebels they are.)</p><p>But then… Khethi was <em>with</em> the yagghorth of the rebels: joyously together, despite deaths past and to come. Karetha was not fully aware of that <em>together:</em> such would be shared later. But she was aware that between them were—something like names, as they shared knowledge. One of those names, she thought, was hers: not sound, but something like a color, something like the smell of a distant star, something like a web whose strands and gaps wove between her and him. And that was a new thing, a strange thing.</p><p>Such a name had never been needed, until now. </p><p><em>She</em> had named him long ago, a small fond name, for she would use it only with her friends, and that fondness was the most important thing. But Khethi, who had no one but her to be with, to pass knowledge between—he had never needed to name her. </p><p>Now he had done so. And that naming was a joy.</p><p>The moment Khethi named her was the moment in which his choice was made. His and hers, for she would not be without him. </p><p>(Could not. But did not wish to, either.)</p>
<hr/><p>Of course the rebels are alarmed to see them; of course they are reluctant to accept Varos’s word that they have turned their coats. But in the end, they have no choice but to accept them. </p><p>Iriane—almost Romulan in her anger, that one—does not want them here. (Karetha and Varos, born of old feuds from before the plague, understand this: friends do not forget friends, kin do not forget kin, and they helped McKennon take many of both from Iriane.) But in time, she allows herself to be persuaded that they—even Varos, even his dead friend Ed Dale, his brother who was more than a brother, as Iriane’s people would say—were but the sword in McKennon’s hand, unable to defy her until her attention went elsewhere.  She accepts that they, too, have suffered, and they agree to trust each other—as battle-comrades, if not friends. </p><p>(They have no word of her grandfather, save that he was alive when they saw him last. Soon, perhaps, they will learn more. So they may earn trust, if not forgiveness.)</p><p>Raksha—who stands unwired at Arios’s side, and gives the advice he most trusts—says what no one else will: if Khethi and those he nests with acted at the will of the Consilium still, they would not be alone, but would have brought a full crew and Domina McKennon hiding behind them. The Consilium has no need to infiltrate the rebellion; it would be more use to them destroy Arios now—Arios, and Nemo, without whom the rebellion would be nothing. <em>Savasci</em>’s empty corridors prove their honesty, and while the Domina could have hidden an army from even unwired minds, she could never have hidden one from Arios. </p><p>(Nemo wants them; Nemo trusts them. This is enough for Sharnas, and therefore for Arios. The others are slower to accept, but they follow the Master. In this, and in other things. That troubles Varos, Karetha knows; perhaps it troubles Arios, too. Certainly he and Varos seem drawn together, a friendship the rest of the rebellion accepts without liking it.) </p><p>More: the rebellion must accept them because they are—no, because <em>Khethi</em> is what they need most. Without a yagghorth, the rebellion was inconsequential; with one, it became a thorn in the Consilium’s side. With two…</p><p>Karetha asks them, almost guileless: why stop at two?</p>
<hr/><p>This is the plan Karetha lays out, when they are with the rebels, when rebels they are. This she says for Khethi; this, she tells Varos, knowing he can translate for her, from the Romulan language of their hearts, from her yagghorth-tilted thoughts:</p><p><em>Savasci</em> is newer than the <em>Nautilus</em>: it can be disguised, easily enough, as some loyal Fleet ship. It can be allowed close. And thus can they be with others: thus can they make rebels out of those the Consilium dismisses as tame monsters. </p><p>Soon: a jump, a visit to a hostile ship’s core, a true-fight turned to play, <em>together.</em> </p><p>Soon, too, some other ship’s yagghorth will take its nestmates and the eggshell they cling to and go to the rebels. And another, and another, and another. </p><p>Those other yagghorths have become of their empaths, as Khethi has become of Karetha, as Nemo has become of Sharnas. They love as their empaths love. For one reason or for both, rebels they will be, and the Consilium will fall.</p>
<hr/><p>The rebellion had never known why Nemo joined them. It could not have been for Khethi’s reason, with no other strange yagghorth to join.</p><p>But there was an empath. And that empath had friends, who he would not abandon. This was reason enough for both to act. Such is obvious to Karetha, if to no one else.</p><p>(Did the Consilium know this, once, of yagghorths, of their bonded empaths? Perhaps. The use they make of them suggests that once they did, for they call the yagghorths mindless and unknowable. But if they ever knew, they have forgotten. Just they have forgotten that the dictates of human and Romulan hearts can outweigh all their powers of pleasure and pain.)</p><p>This they still say: the yagghorths regard their bonded empaths as nestmates, and their ships as eggs, to be carried with them as they travel. </p><p>This they have forgotten: to a yagghorth, its own nestmates’ and its nestmates’ nestmates are the same. As the nature of each becomes that of the other, much is shared. What matters to the bonded empath matters to the bonded yagghorth—insofar as it can be understood.  </p><p>That last point, perhaps, was the one that trapped the Consilium. </p><p>Those first empaths, those first yagghorths, when they were first together—they were all one thing and none of the other. Only the simplest knowledge was between them. Important things, yes—but no subtleties. And the malice of the Consilium is a subtle thing, in its way.</p><p>Time has passed: empaths have taken on a yagghorth-nature—and yagghorths have changed too, though only their empaths know it. Empaths—and their friends.</p><p>As empaths grow stranger, others come to fear them. This, the Consilium knows; this, they rely on. </p><p>But friendship, love, these are stronger than that. <em>Friends do not forget friends,</em> in the words of one world. Or in the words of another, <em>Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.</em> </p><p>Those that stay with them through all change—these are friends: these, to a yagghorth, are nestmates.  Not merely tolerable parasites to take along with their eggs, but precious creatures to willfully keep by them, to be together with. </p><p>Thus, Nemo acted; thus, Khethi joined him. </p><p>Perhaps there will be others. </p><p>No: certainly there will be. </p><p>It was no small thing, after all, to be <em>together</em>.</p>
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